Embodiments of the invention are directed, in general, to wireless communication systems and can be applied to generation and multiplexing of signals in multi-user wireless communications systems based on single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA).
FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a transmitter 110 and a receiver 150 in a wireless communication system 100. For simplicity, transmitter 110 and receiver 150 are each equipped with a single antenna but in practice they may have two or more antennas. For the downlink (or forward link), transmitter 110 may be part of a base station (also referred to as Node B), and receiver 150 may be part of a terminal (also referred to as user equipment—UE). For the uplink (or reverse link), transmitter 110 may be part of a UE, and receiver 150 may be part of a Node B. A Node B is generally a fixed station and may also be called a base transceiver system (BTS), an access point, or some other terminology. A UE, also commonly referred to as terminal or mobile station, may be fixed or mobile and may be a wireless device, a cellular phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a wireless modem card, and so on.
At transmitter 110, a reference signal (also referred to as pilot signal) processor 112 generates reference signal symbols (or pilot symbols). A transmitter (TX) data processor 114 processes (e.g., encodes, interleaves, and symbol maps) traffic data and generates data symbols. As used herein, a data symbol is a modulation symbol for data, a reference signal symbol is a modulation symbol for reference signal, and the term “modulation symbol” refers to a real valued or complex valued quantity which is transmitted across the wireless link. A modulator 120 receives and multiplexes the data and reference symbols, performs modulation on the multiplexed data and reference symbols, and generates transmission symbols. A transmitter unit (TMTR) 132 processes (e.g., converts to analog, amplifies, filters, and frequency up-converts) the transmission symbols and generates a radio frequency (RF) modulated signal, which is transmitted via an antenna 134.
At receiver 150, an antenna 152 receives the RF modulated signal from transmitter 110 and provides a received signal to a receiver unit (RCVR) 154. Receiver unit 154 conditions (e.g., filters, amplifies, frequency down-converts, and digitizes) the received signal and provides input samples. A demodulator 160 performs demodulation on the input samples to obtain received symbols. Demodulator 160 provides received reference signal symbols to a channel processor 170 and provides received data symbols to a data detector 172. Channel processor 170 derives channel estimates for the wireless channel between transmitter 110 and receiver 150 and estimates of noise and estimation errors based on the received reference signal. Data detector 172 performs detection (e.g., equalization or matched filtering) on the received data symbols with the channel estimates and provides data symbol estimates, which are estimates of the data symbols sent by transmitter 110. A receiver (RX) data processor 180 processes (e.g., symbol demaps, deinterleaves, and decodes) the data symbol estimates and provides decoded data. In general, the processing at receiver 150 is complementary to the processing at transmitter 110.
Controllers/processors 140 and 190 direct the operation of various processing units at transmitter 110 and receiver 150, respectively. For example, controller processor 190 may provide demodulator 160 with a replica of the reference signal used by reference signal processor 112 in order for demodulator to perform possible correlation of the two signals. Memories 142 and 192 store program codes and data for transmitter 110 and receiver 150, respectively.
The disclosed invention is applicable, but not restricted to, frequency division multiplexed (FDM) reference signal transmission for simultaneous transmission from multiple UEs. This includes, but is not restricted to, OFDMA, OFDM, FDMA, DFT-spread OFDM, DFT-spread OFDMA, single-carrier OFDMA (SC-OFDMA), and single-carrier OFDM (SC-OFDM) pilot transmission. The enumerated versions of FDM transmission strategies are not mutually exclusive, since, for example, single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) may be realized using the DFT-spread OFDM technique. In addition, embodiments of the invention also apply to general single-carrier systems.
FIG. 2 is an example of a block diagram showing an OFDM(A) transmitter of the reference signal (RS). It comprises of the RS sequence generator 201 and the Modulate block 202, which generate a reference signal block 203. Samples 203 are transmitted over the air. Modulate block further consists of a Tone Map 202A, insertion of zeros or other signals 202B, and the IFFT in 202C. Tone Map 202A can be arbitrary. Elements of apparatus may be implemented as components in a programmable processor or Digital Signal Processor (DSP).
FIG. 3 is an example of a block diagram showing a DFT-spread OFDM(A) (bracketed letter “A” means that the statement holds for both DFT-spread OFDM and DFT-spread OFDMA) reference signal (RS) transmitter. It comprises of the RS sequence generator 301 and the Modulate block 302, which generate a reference signal block 303. Samples 303 are transmitted over the air. Modulate block further consists of: DFT 302D, Tone Map 302A, insertion of zeros or other signals 302B, and the IFFT in 302C. Tone Map 302A can be arbitrary. Elements of apparatus may be implemented as components in a programmable processor or Digital Signal Processor (DSP).
Embodiments of the invention will be described using a family of mathematically well studied sequences, known as CAZAC sequences, as transmitted reference signals for several purposes including coherent demodulation of the data signal and possible channel quality estimation. CAZAC sequences are defined as all complex-valued sequences with the following two properties: 1) constant amplitude (CA), implying that magnitudes of all sequence elements are mutually equal and 2) zero cyclic autocorrelation (ZAC). Well-known examples-of CAZAC sequences include (but are not limited to) Chu and Frank-Zadoff sequences (or Zadoff-Chu sequences), and generalized chirp like (GCL) sequences. Nevertheless, the use of CAZAC reference signals is not mandatory for this invention. There is a need to define reference signal (RS) generation and transmission such that multiple reference signals can be simultaneously orthogonally multiplexed. Such generation should allow efficient use of the RS resources, which will in turn maximize the number of simultaneously multiplexed RS transmitters. Although the exemplary embodiment considers for brevity RS generation and multiplexing, exactly the same principles can be used to orthogonally multiplex other signals and increase their number, including acknowledgement signals (ACK/NAK) and channel quality indication (CQI) signals.